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As a child, Wangari Maathai learned from her grandmother that a large fig tree near her family home in central Kenya was sacred and not to be disturbed. And she remembered gathering water at the springs protected by the roots of the trees. Then later when she returned to her family home, she began to notice the changes in the environment: the drying watersheds, forest clearance, increased desertification and the disappearance of the streams of her childhood .
She listened to the women in the village talking about the ecological changes and came 'to understand the linkage between environmental degradation and the felt needs of the communities'.
She saw that trees were the key to replenishing the soil, providing fuel, protecting the watersheds and providing nutrition.
“If you understand and you are disturbed, then you are moved
to action,” Wangai said “That's exactly what happened to me.”
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Wangarĩ Muta Maathai (/wænˈɡɑːri mɑːˈtaɪ/; 1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a renowned Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize.[1] As a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlifts, she took an opportunity to study in the United States, earning a Bachelor's Degree at Mount St. Scholastica (Benedictine College) and a Master's Degree at the University of Pittsburgh. She then went on to become the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a PhD, at the University of Nairobi in Kenya.
In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement,[2] an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "converting the Kenyan ecological debate into mass action for reforestation." Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and Natural resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. She was affiliated to professional bodies and received several awards.[3] On Sunday, 25 September 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer.
At the age of 11, Maathai moved to St. Cecilia's Intermediate Primary School, a boarding school at the Mathari Catholic Mission in Nyeri.[8] Maathai studied at St. Cecilia's for four years. During this time, she became fluent in English and converted to Catholicism. She was involved with the Legion of Mary, whose members attempted "to serve God by serving fellow human beings."[9] Studying at St. Cecilia's, she was sheltered from the ongoing Mau Mau uprising, which forced her mother to move from their homestead to an emergency village in Ihithe.[10] When she completed her studies there in 1956, she was rated first in her class, and was granted admission to the only Catholic high school for girls in Kenya, Loreto High School in Limuru.[11]
As the end of East African colonialism approached, Kenyan politicians, such as Tom Mboya, were proposing ways to make education in Western nations available to promising students. John F. Kennedy, then a United States Senator, agreed to fund such a program through the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, initiating what became known as the Kennedy Airlift or Airlift Africa. Maathai became one of some 300 Kenyans selected to study in the United States in September 1960.[12]
She received a scholarship to study at Mount St. Scholastica College (now Benedictine College), in Atchison, Kansas, where she majored in biology, with minors in chemistry and German.[13] After receiving her bachelor of science degree in 1964, she studied at the University of Pittsburgh for a master's degree in biology. Her graduate studies there were funded by the Africa-America Institute,[14] and during her time in Pittsburgh, she first experienced environmental restoration, when local environmentalists pushed to rid the city of air pollution.[15] In January 1966, Maathai received her MSc in biological sciences,[16] and was appointed to a position as research assistant to a professor of zoology at University College of Nairobi.[17]
Upon returning to Kenya, Maathai dropped her forename, preferring to be known by her birth name, Wangarĩ Muta.[18] When she arrived at the university to start her new job, she was informed that it had been given to someone else. Maathai believed this was because of gender and tribal bias.[19] After a two-month job search, Professor Reinhold Hofmann, from the University of Giessen in Germany, offered her a job as a research assistant in the microanatomy section of the newly established Department of Veterinary Anatomy in the School of Veterinary Medicine at University College of Nairobi.[20] In April 1966, she met Mwangi Mathai, another Kenyan who had studied in America, who would later become her husband.[21] She also rented a small shop in the city, and established a general store, at which her sisters worked. In 1967, at the urging of Professor Hofmann, she travelled to the University of Giessen in Germany in pursuit of a doctorate. She studied both at Giessen and the University of Munich.